


I'm Gonna Make This Place Your Home

by Dredfulhapiness



Series: Hello My Old Heart [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everyone Is Alive, Iron Family, Irondad, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 08:18:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19353082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dredfulhapiness/pseuds/Dredfulhapiness
Summary: Tony had nearly forgotten what it felt like to have a full house. After the avengers dwindled off, he had grown used to quiet mansions. Now, though, he stood in the doorway of the kitchen, mug of coffee in his hand, watching the morning unfold.(Or, the one where no one died and they're all happy)





	I'm Gonna Make This Place Your Home

**Author's Note:**

> An AU where Tony & Nat never died & the boys stay the weekend at Tony's. That's it. That's the fic.

 

Tony had nearly forgotten what it felt like to have a full house. After the avengers dwindled off, he had grown used to quiet mansions. Now, though, he stood in the doorway of the kitchen, mug of coffee in his hand, watching the morning unfold.

“I’m just saying.” Peter pointed at something on the tablet screen with his spoon. “Steel is going to be too dense.”

“That’s why I suggested platinum,” Harley said in a way that sounded like ‘duh.’

“That’s even denser. It needs to be able to get off the ground.” Peter said this around a mouthful of cereal.

“It _needs_ to withstand heat, that’s way more important.”

“Not if the engine can’t handle the weight it’s not.”

Tony took a sip of his coffee. They’d argue about this all day. He knew that, of course, because they’d argued about it all night. They’d been arguing about it since they walked through Strange’s portal. 

(“I’m not a Taxi,” Strange had warned him from the doorway.

“You need the practice,” Tony promised with a shit eating grin. “Don’t worry, I’ll have them home by curfew.”)

“No science at the breakfast table,” he said finally. Both of their heads shot up, suddenly aware of Tony’s presence and, god, is this what it’s like to have teenagers? Was Morgan going to be like that one day?

Harley rolled his eyes. Peter’s lips twitched into a smile.

“Maybe you could help?” Peter tilted his head up at him.

“If we weren’t sitting at the breakfast table I said we didn’t do science at,” Tony said, “I’d recommend titanium or Molybdenum?” 

* * *

 

Tony was starting to realize that teenagers were weird. For one thing, Harley and Peter seemed to have their own language.

“Hey, can you pass me that?” Peter pointed to the Philips-head screwdriver. 

Harley tossed it to him, but not without yelling “Yeet!” as it flew through the air.

There was also the issue with the road signs. On their trip to the grocery store Tony had discovered that the two had a call and response when it came to road work signs and, honestly, Tony didn’t want to ask. 

It wasn’t until the third time he heard, “uh, yeah. I sure _hope_ it does,” that he demanded an explanation.

When he got home, he was forced to sit for ten minutes and watch a Vine compilation and, oh god, please make it stop.

The other issue with teenagers was their simultaneous lack of focus and hyper fixations. Peter and Harley could lock themselves in the garage for hours, but when it came to having a conversation over lunch, they couldn’t keep themselves straight. Peter’s phone was constantly blowing up with texts from his friends, (“Flash made a group chat,” he’d explained with a roll of his eyes. “Half of the texts in it are MJ asking them to please, for the love of God, text each other individually, and the other half are people sending memes.” At one point in his life, Tony may have been hip enough to know what a meme was, but his break from the tech industry had rendered him useless in that department) but he also never seemed to notice. Then again, Tony didn’t hear from people much anymore. Steve had gone back to the past and the only people left behind that he’d been close to were Rhody and Nat. He wasn’t really sure where Nat was. She was slippery like that. 

* * *

 

Tony, propped up against the headboard, watched Pepper get ready for bed. She was talking about something, an article she’d read, or a conversation she’d had with Happy, and all Tony could think about was Morgan running to greet Peter and Harley at the door. He thought about his parents dying, about being lonely, about never having to share.

“We should have another kid,” he said, cutting Pepper off.

“We already have three,” Pepper answered without skipping a beat. She turned to face him, her head tilted. She looked as regal and put together as the day he met her.

“I mean it.” He leaned forward. “I don’t want Morgan to be an only child. I don’t want her to…”

Pepper raised an eyebrow. She knew what he meant. “There are worse things she could do,” she promised, hunching over the bed to give him a kiss, “than turn out like you.”

Tony wanted to point out that there was so much about him to regret, so many pieces of himself that he’d left at bars, and girls’ homes and battlefields that sometimes he wasn’t sure where he was at that exact moment. And what if, just like him, Morgan put little pieces of herself into things the way he did dum-e and every iron suit and with every failure she found herself a little more stranded? What if he raised an alcoholic asshole? What if he raised a hero? How could he forgive himself?

“You know,” Pepper said, as if she were reading his mind, “she’s got a lot more people looking out for her than you did.” She nodded at the door. Tony sniffed. 

“I had you,” Tony said.

“And you turned out okay,” Pepper agreed. She tucked herself into bed and turned out the lamp on her end table.

“I’m serious about having another kid, though,” he said. “Wouldn’t that be nice? We could name it after—“

“Your mom,” Pepper suggested.

“Really? A ‘your mom’ joke?”

“Maria. If it’s a girl.”

“And if it’s a boy?”

Pepper didn’t hesitate. “Steve.”

Something lodged in Tony’s throat.

* * *

Tony could hear the bickering from the garage along with abrupt changes in music: Led Zepplin, Rhianna, Baby Shark. It was baby shark that reminded him that his daughter was in there with them. 

Earlier, she’d been sitting on the workbench next to them coloring in their plans (when Peter and Harley offered to let her pick the color, Tony had choked on his coffee. Clearly they were unaware that her favorite color combination at the moment was lime green and bubblegum). Now, it sounded like she could be in the middle of a war zone.

He popped his head in. The first thing he noticed was the webbing. It covered the radio, part of the wall, and some of the lightbulbs. The second thing he noticed was Morgan. She was hanging onto Peter’s neck, laughing at the chaos.

“That’s why you shouldn’t _use it_!” Peter shouted, but there was a hint of amusement in his voice. Tony followed his gaze to Harley’s hand. He was stuck to the table.

“I don’t know why you would even bring them! Where are you going to use them? We’re in the middle of nowhere!”

“And what if something comes up?”

“What the fuck is going to come up?”

Tony cleared his throat. “Ears,” he warned, pointing at Morgan. Then, “Peter, did you web Harley to the table?”

Peter said, “no.” At the same time Harley said “yes.” 

“Harley webshooted himself,” Morgan said, the voice of reason. Peter held up the hand he wasn’t holding her with. They high-fived. 

“He shot the first web,” Harley argued.

“At the _radio!”_

“Stop! Stop, both of you!” Tony waved his arms. “Is this what you two are like when you’re alone? Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t care. Can we _not_ mess up my garage and/or daughter?”

They both stared at him and, goddammit, why did neither of these kids take him seriously as an authority figure? He was fucking Iron Man, these kids should be bowing down to him.

“Why did you pull out your webshooters in the first place? Aren’t they like martial arts: only used for good?”

“Well. Uh.” Peter scratched the back of his neck. “I needed to change the radio station,” he said lamely.

“With your webs?”

“Ummmm... Yes?” 

Tony could feel himself going grey. He held out his hand. “Give them to me.”

Harley snorted.

“What?” Peter said.

“The webshooters. Give them to me.”

“Mr. Stark I—“ 

“Peter. Now.” Peter sighed. He plucked the one webshooter from where it was tangledin webs against Harley’s hand. He pulled the other one from his pocket and tossed them both to Tony. “You’ll get these back when you learn to behave.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d have problems with the webshooters that weekend. Later in the afternoon, after snooping around, Morgan managed to find where Tony had hidden them (it was only in a kitchen drawer). Tony would walk into the yard only to see Peter and Harley teaching her how to shoot them at trees. He let Pepper intervene that time. And as she carried Morgan away from a complaining Peter and Harley, she caught his gaze and rolled her eyes, smiling.

It was exactly what he’d imagined when he said he wanted kids.

The next time he poked his head in was because it was eerily silent. Morgan was down for her nap, and with thechilling fear that Harley and Peter may have killed each other, Tony checked back into the garage.

They had, in fact, not killed each other, but Peter _was_ on the ceiling.

“Try it one more time,” he said, pacing. Harley was frowning down at the shell on the workbench.

“We’ve already tried it three times, Pete.”

And, oh. Tony got it. They were grieving. He knew that feeling: staring failure in the face. 

“Just try it again,” Peter said. Harley sighed. Tony heard the thrums of an engine. He also, upon second glance, saw the beginnings of smoke rising from the metal. Harley pulled his hand away with a hiss. Peter, along with the muttering of a few explitives, moved to web the fire extinguisher to himself. When nothing happened he looked down at his hand and frowned.

Harley was the one that managed to turn it off, but not without burning his fingertips. He looked up at Peter, exasperated, and Peter only shrugged.

“Back to the drawing board, I guess,” Peter said. He flipped off the table and back onto the floor.

Tony closed the door without letting them know he was there.

* * *

“Is this what you’ve been using my HBO account for?” 

Peter startled. He jumped up and turned in the air to face Tony.

“I thought you were impossible to sneak up on— what with all the spider... things.” Tony waved his hand.

“Senses,” Peter said. “They’re spider senses.”

“But isn’t it only one?”

“What?”

“Isn’t it only one extra sense?”

Peter stared at him.

“Forget about it, it doesn’t matter. Are you watching Game of Thrones?”

Peter shrugged. “It ended while I was...” he cleared his throat. “I wanted to finish it.”

Tony’s lips slipped into a frown. He sniffed.

“Where’s Harley?” He asked, to change the subject.

“He’s in the garage.” Peter plopped back down on the couch. When Tony joined him, he hit the pause button.

“And you’re not with him?”

Peter shrugged. “I needed a break.” He offered up the bowl of popcorn. Tony took a handful. “Plus he hates this show.”

“I can’t imagine him liking much,” Tony said. Peter shoved popcorn in his face.

“He likes math,” he said lamely, “and engineering. And you and Morgan. He’s just a little… stuck right now.” He didn’t say “a lot of people are” but Tony knew he was thinking it. The world was having trouble adjusting to the return to normalcy.

Instead of voicing that Tony said, “that’s probably because you webbed him to the table.”

“I didn’t—“ Peter groaners, exasperated, and threw his hands into the air. “It’s not my fault he can’t aim. Besides...” he rubbed the back of his neck. “It dissolves.”

Tony was about to reply when Peter added:

“Hey, does that girl look like MJ to you?” He pointed at the screen. An ad for a new show on HBO was playing. Tony squinted. It was called  _Euphoria._

“Uh,” he said, struggling to remember what Peter’s friend looked like. “Yes?” 

“Right? I keep telling her and she keeps arguing with me. At this point I think she might be moonlighting as a movie star.”

“She wouldn’t be the only one with a hidden identity.”

“Speaking of that…” Peter pulled his legs up and turned to Tony. “Did you see that there are _lunchboxes_ with Spider-Man on them? And Laptop covers, and T-shirts, and…” he trailed off. “That’s weird, isn’t it? Was it weird for you? When all the Iron Man merchandise came out? I mean, what does that mean?”

That… had not been what Tony was expecting. “I’m used to having my face plastered all over everything,” he said with a wave of his hand. “It was just another Tuesday.”

“Oh,” Peter said. “Right.” That…. Had apparently not been what Peter had been expecting.

“Kid,” he said finally, “You’ve got a lot on your plate. Those T-shirts mean people like you. It’s the least of your problems.” Tony grabbed the remote from the coffee table and put it into Peter’s hands. “Right now your top priority should be watching this weird dragon show, alright? Don’t worry about merchandising.” And, God, Tony just wanted him to be a kid that had never been dragged into the conflict of two grown men.

Peter hesitated, then took the remote. “Thanks,” He said, quiet. “For everything.”

Tony wanted to say _don’t thank me, you’ve earned it,_ but instead he just smiled and, in a moment that overtook him, reached out and ruffled Peter’s hair. “Don’t worry about it, kid.”

He stood. “I’m gonna head to bed,” he said. “Enjoy the show.”

The next morning he found a very tired and disgruntled Peter at the kitchen table, his head in his hands. Harley was next to him, looking unfaszd as he ate his banana.

“You okay, kid?” Tony asked, sliding him the mug of coffee he had poured himself.

“All the good TV writers got snapped,” Peter said. “That’s the only explanation.”

Tony snorted.

* * *

“Thanks for having us, Mr Stark!” Peter had his backpack slung half over one shoulder. He was reaching over the couch to pull Morgan into a hug. 

“Try not to make a habit of it,” Tony said. “I can’t afford to feed you.”

Peter opened his mouth to say something, probably an apology, but Harley put a hand on his upper arm.

“If you can’t afford to feed us then we’re screwed,” Harley said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Tony said. “I mean that literally: don’t mention it. The second people hear that I let guests spend the night I’ll have all the avengers in my house again.” Which... might not be the worst thing in the world.

Three weeks later, when the Audi broke down on the side of the road, Tony didn’t bother trying to fix it himself. Instead, he called his friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and his friendly neighborhood Spider-Man’s friend. It was nice to hear someone working in the garage again. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to either hmu in the comments or on Tumblr or twitter @dredfulhapiness with thoughts, questions, concerns, or head canons. I'm desperate to talk about this family all the time.


End file.
